CSTonline

[CALL FOR PAPERS -- [InMedia, the French Journal of Media
studies](https://inmedia.revues.org) ]{style="font-size: small;"}

DOCUMENTARY AND ENTERTAINMENT

The purpose of this special issue of InMedia is to further the
understanding of the documentary by linking it to the notion of
entertainment, which has so far been underexplored in the expanding
field of documentary studies. Our aim is thus to study the strategies
and forms used by documentary filmmakers when they willingly choose to
inject entertainment into their film. InMedia, the French Journal of
Media studies, a peer-reviewed online journal
([https://inmedia.revues.org/?lang=en](https://inmedia.revues.org/?lang=en){target="_blank"}),
is published by the research unit CREW at Sorbonne Nouvelle University
and was launched by Professor Divina Frau-Meigs, Nolwen Mingant, and
Cécilia Tirtaine in 2011. The content of the journal is in English
featuring articles by international scholars. Its current managing
editors are Clémentine Tholas and Sébastien Mort.

The documentary, as a distinct film form, has often been associated with
what Bill Nichols termed the "discourses of sobriety"
[[^\[1\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_1');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_1');"}[[
Bill Nichols, Representing Reality p.
29]{style="font-size: small;"}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_1
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

  and scholarly works on the subject have emphasized the serious
political or social nature of the documentary, with a special focus on
the rhetoric and politics of documentaries.

[Starting in the second half of the 20th century, "hard news" found in
the news media was distinctly separate from the "soft news" in the
entertainment media. In that respect, the documentary film form, whether
for cinema or for TV, was principally meant to inform its audiences
about topics they were not aware of. The technological and esthetic
evolution of the documentary did not really have an impact on the public
perception of what documentaries could do, as argued by Brian Winston,
who contends that Direct Cinema is the continuation of the Griersonian
heritage rather than a radical break from it. However in the last thirty
years the media environment has considerably changed, blurring the lines
between hard and soft news, as Delli Carpini and Willams clearly affirm:
"...the form and content of news and entertainment \[have\] come to
resemble each other more closely." [[^\[2\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_2');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_2');"}[[Delli
Carpini and Williams After Broadcast News,p.
164]{style="font-size: small;"}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_2
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}]{style="font-size: small;"}

These changes, mainly in the domain of television, brought about a new
hybrid form that combines traditional news with entertainment, a form
known as "infotainment". If the authors now state that the term
"infotainment" has "outlived whatever usefulness \[it\] might have once
had" [[^\[3\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_3');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_3');"}[[Delli
Carpini and Williams, p. 10 and
following]{style="font-size: small;"}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_3
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

historically it was widely used to describe influential TV shows such as
The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. In retrospect, it seems that the
lack of a comprehensive definition that would deal with what these new
forms of entertainment and information media could do is linked to the
historical evolution of their distribution platforms.

For feature documentary films, the groundbreaking film Roger & Me in
1989 by Michael Moore ushered in a new era where what was referred to
then as "infotainment" could now be found in documentary films, thus
departing from the classic models of the documentary film pioneers John
Grierson, Dziga Vertov, and Robert Flaherty among others. For Moore,
even the term "documentary" was anathema and should be replaced by
"movie" as he feels it is necessary to abide by "the tenets of
entertainment". [[^\[4\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_4');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_4');"}[[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/13-rules-for-making-docum_b_5834954.html]{.footnote_url_wrap}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_4
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

Thus, a documentary should both educate (following the hard news
principles) AND entertain, which is what soft news was meant to do.

[As a result of this new interest in the relationship between
documentary and entertainment, we seek contributions that focus on this
unique combination.]{style="font-size: small;"}

One possible line of inquiry would be to look at the mutual influence of
"infotainment TV", understood as a historically specific form, and the
documentary film: How has the documentary tradition and some of its
practices (compilation films, editing, voice-over, social commentary,
etc.) shaped the structure and esthetics of "infotainment TV"? In turn,
how has the TV medium influenced the contemporary documentary (fast
editing, humor, overt bias, generalizations, etc.)? Is the
"infotainment" documentary a new genre, or mode, in and of itself? To
what extent is this new documentary film genre affected by the influence
of Television and its short information format? Are these current trends
in documentary film just a longer version of the television infotainment
format? Or, could we say that they are just the translation of a classic
documentary film with added elements from entertainment TV to bring it
up to date?

A second axis of investigation would be to consider documentary as
entertainment. Based on Annette Hill's study of documentary modes of
engagement, [[^\[5\]^]{role="button" tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_5');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_5');"}[[Annette
Hill, p. 217, based on an expression by Bill
Nichols]{style="font-size: small;"}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_5
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

how is it possible to rethink and reinvent the tension between
information and entertainment most people associate with the
documentary? What is deemed an entertaining documentary (fast-paced,
humorous yet informative)? How and why is it perceived as such? How has
the technological and cultural evolution of what constitutes
entertainment in our current society been incorporated into documentary
film? At the level of production, do documentary filmmakers include the
necessity to entertain (cf. Moore's distinction between documentaries
and movies) within their feature documentaries?

Finally, a third thematic axis would be to examine the political
consequences of this new hybrid form between information and
entertainment? How have politics and entertainment been successfully
combined creating politainment, a new genre that has been gaining in
popularity? In what ways is entertainment a new way to get the spectator
involved in the political process?  How effective is it in delivering
votes afterwards at the ballot box? From the political documentaries
that shaped the 2004 American presidential election, as studied by James
McEnteer, to the recent focus on Steve Bannon, [[^\[6\]^]{role="button"
tabindex="0"
onclick="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_6');"
onkeypress="footnote_moveToReference_3753_50('footnote_plugin_reference_3753_50_6');"}[[http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/steve-bannon-films-movies-documentaries-trump-hollywood-214495]{.footnote_url_wrap}]{#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3753_50_6
.footnote_tooltip}]{.footnote_referrer}

Donald Trump's Chief Strategist, as a former documentary filmmaker, what
are the links between documentary, entertainment, and electoral
politics? Has the documentary caused the transformation of politics into
reality TV -- a criticism that was already leveled, in different terms,
against Robert Drew's political documentaries in the 1960s?

We welcome individual proposals pertaining -- but by no means limited --
to the following thematic areas and their intersections with
entertainment and documentary film:  
●        The role of television in the evolution of the documentary  
●        The fictional dimension of the documentary  
●        The use of humor in documentary films  
●        The emergence of entertainment TV elements in documentary
film  
●        Recent developments of "infotainment" strategies in documentary
film  
●        The role and effectiveness of politainment in documentary
film  
●        The use of music in documentary films  
●        The documentary and the shortening attention span of the modern
spectator  
●        Characteristics of the documentary of the 21st century  
●        Reception studies of the documentary as entertainment  
●        The "boring" documentary devoid of entertainment  
●        "Mockumentaries" and their esthetic strategies, in film or on
television  
●        The representation of documentary filmmakers in fiction films
and TV series  
●        Documentary parodies in the Documentary Now! series  
●        The typology of information and entertainment in documentary
films

Although the journal is written entirely in English, the documentary
films under study can come from countries that are not English-speaking.
We are open to all types of approaches  (formal analysis, political
science, media studies, semiotics, gender studies, race studies,
etc...). Proposals should not exceed 300 words, should include a short
bibliography and should be sent both to David Lipson
(lipson.fr@gmail.com) and to Zachary Baqué  (baque.zachary@neuf.fr)
before September 8th 2017.

**Bibliography**  
BARNOUW Erik. Documentary, A History of Non-Fiction Film, New York and
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974, 1983, 1993.  
BAUDRILLARD Jean. Simulacres et simulations, Paris: Editions Galilée,
1981.  
BENSON Thomas W. & Brian J. Snee (eds.). The Rhetoric of the New
Political Documentary, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
2008.  
DELLI CARPINI, M. and WILLIAMS B. After Broadcast News: Media Regimes,
Democracy, And the New Information Environment New York: Cambridge
University Press. 2011.  
DELLI CARPINI, M. and WILLIAMS B. "Let Us Infotain You: Politics in the
New Media Environment." In BENNETT L. and ENTMAN R. (Eds.), Mediated
politics: Communication in the future of democracy (pp. 160-181). New
York: Cambridge University Press. 2001.  
DEBORD Guy.  La Société du spectacle, Paris: Gallimard, collection «
folio », 1967, 1992.  
GOODWIN Andrew, WHANNEL Garry. Understanding Television, London:
Routledge, 1992.  
GRIERSON John. On Documentary, London: Faber & Faber, 1966.  
HILL Annette. "Documentary Modes of Engagement." In AUSTIN T. and DE
JONG W. (Eds.), Rethinking Documentary: New Perspectives, New Practices
(pp. 217-231). Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2008.  
HOLBERT R. Lance. "A Typology for the Study of Entertainment Television
and Politics," American Behavioral Scientist 49, n°3 (2005)  
KELSO Tony. "And now no word from our sponsor, How HBO puts the risk
back into television" in LEVERETTE Marc, Brian L. OTT and Cara Louise
BUCKLEY (eds.), It's Not TV, Watching HBO in the Post-television Era,
New York & London: Routledge, 2008.  
McENTEER James. Shooting the Truth: The Rise of American Political
Documentaries, Westport CO and London: Praeger, 2006.  
MENAND Louis.  "Nanook and Me: Fahrenheit 9/11 and the Documentary
Tradition", The New Yorker, August 9-16  2004, 90-96. , accessed January
12, 2014.  
NICHOLS Bill. Blurred Boundaries: Questions of Meaning in Contemporary
Culture, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, 2001.  
NICHOLS Bill.  Representing Reality: Issues and Concepts in Documentary,
Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1991.  
NICHOLS Bill. Speaking Truths with Film: Evidence, Ethics, Politics in
Documentary, Oakland: University of California Press, 2016.  
NINEY François.  L'Épreuve du réel à l'écran, Essai sur le principe de
réalité documentaire, Bruxelles: De Boeck & Larcier, 2002, 2004.  
NISBET Matt.  "That's infotainment", The Skeptical Inquirer April 30,
2001 accessed November 11, 2016,
[http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/thats_infotainment](http://www.csicop.org/specialarticles/show/thats_infotainment){target="_blank"}  
WINSTON Brian (Ed.) The Documentary Film Book, London/Palgrave
Macmillan, 2013.

 

 

 

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| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}1]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [ Bill Nichols, Representing Reality p. 29]{style="font-size: small;"}                                                              |
| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}2]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [Delli Carpini and Williams After Broadcast News,p. 164]{style="font-size: small;"}                                                 |
| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}3]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [Delli Carpini and Williams, p. 10 and following]{style="font-size: small;"}                                                        |
| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}4]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/13-rules-for-making-docum_b_5834954.html]{.footnote_url_wrap}                          |
| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}5]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [Annette Hill, p. 217, based on an expression by Bill Nichols]{style="font-size: small;"}                                           |
| [[↑]{.footnote_index_arrow}6]{.footnote_plugin_link role="button" tabindex="0"} | [http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/steve-bannon-films-movies-documentaries-trump-hollywood-214495]{.footnote_url_wrap} |

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CALL FOR PAPERS – InMedia, the French Journal of Media studies   DOCUMENTARY AND ENTERTAINMENT  The purpose of this special issue of InMedia is to further the understanding of the documentary by linking it to the notion of entertainment, which has so far been underexplored in the expanding field of documentary studies.

CFP: InMedia, the French Journal of Media studies &#8211; DOCUMENTARY AND ENTERTAINMENT

Jennifer O’Meara

Although Netflix's approach to genre is different to those predominant
in screen studies, the streaming site provides useful contextual
materials for teaching on the subject. At several points last semester
Netflix proved relevant to discussions of genre as part of an
introductory Film Studies module, as well as an Honours 'Film Genres'
module. Because, leaving the complex theoretical debates about genre to
one side, the streaming platform indicates much about how genre works
today from the perspectives of industry and audiences---and so it can
help to address the question of what purposes does genre serve, and for
whom?

When considering the relationship between genre and marketing, a click
on a given Netflix 'genre' or 'subgenre' quickly generates a bank of
promotional imagery--- materials that can make common marketing
conventions immediately apparent: such as pink and red colour schemes
for romantic comedies, or orange and black for action films. Also, since
we can choose to order a given Netflix genre category by year, it's
possible to trace aspects of a genre's evolution over time. While this
would mean drawing from the site's limited and ever-changing catalogue
of content, it nonetheless allows students a user-friendly way to engage
with examples from various periods (assuming they have access to an
account).

Even when Netflix departs strongly from critical approaches, such as by
listing documentary as a *genre* (at odds with our conception of it as a
*mode* of filmmaking), this can be a useful way to discuss genre as
malleable concept, meaning different things to different groups. In
fact, given that Netflix also lists 'mockumentaries', separately, as a
subgenre of 'comedy', it raises an interesting question to pose to
students: why might screen studies scholars agree that the mockumentary
is a subgenre of comedy, even if they don't consider documentary itself
to be a genre?

More generally, the platform's complex approach to categorisation is
valuable in that it offers rich examples of subgenres and genre
hybridity. For instance, if deconstructing horror film conventions is
the aim, then Netflix helpfully distinguishes a subgenre of 'Serial and
Slasher Films' from those of 'Zombie Horror Films', 'Vampire Horror
Films', 'B-Horror Films' and 'Horror Comedies', among others.

![](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1-300x131.png){.alignnone
.wp-image-3700 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="402" height="176"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1-300x131.png.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1-450x196.png.webp 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1-140x61.png.webp 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1-768x334.png 768w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-1.png 933w"
sizes="(max-width: 402px) 100vw, 402px"}

Pointing to the distinction Richard Maltby makes between Hollywood as 'a
generic cinema' rather than 'a cinema of genres' (1995: 107), clicking
on an individual film provides a list of genres to which it can be said
to belong; based on specific generic components. The value of this
system becomes clear in relation to a feature like *The Lobster*
(Lanthimos, 2015), a notably self-aware film which Netflix classifies as
'sci-fi and fantasy' as well as 'comedy', 'dark comedy' and 'romantic
comedy'. In keeping with the film's playful approach to genre
norms---which includes the use of absurdist humour and an ahistorical
dystopia to question the norms of heteronormative coupling---the mix of
categories encapsulates the film's generic positioning better than any
single genre label could.

*![](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2-300x113.png){.alignnone
.wp-image-3701 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="361" height="136"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2-300x113.png.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2-450x169.png.webp 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2-140x53.png.webp 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2-768x288.png 768w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-2.png 1004w"
sizes="(max-width: 361px) 100vw, 361px"}*

In its quest to attract and retain customers, Netflix has invested
heavily in identifying and utilising generic components. As Alexis
Madrigal explores in ['How Netflix Reverse Engineered
Hollywood'](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-netflix-reverse-engineered-hollywood/282679/)
(2014), the company has created close to 77,000 micro-genres by
combining human analysis with algorithms:

Using large teams of people specially trained to watch movies, Netflix
deconstructed Hollywood. They paid people to watch films and tag them
with all kinds of metadata. This process is so sophisticated and precise
that taggers receive a 36-page training document that teaches them how
to rate movies on their sexually suggestive content, goriness, romance
levels, and even narrative elements like plot conclusiveness. They
capture dozens of different movie attributes. They even rate the moral
status of characters. When these tags are combined with millions of
users viewing habits, they become Netflix's competitive advantage.

Most of these micro-genres do not appear on the site, but some of them
can now be accessed using [codes listed
elsewhere](https://netflixcodes.me/), as well as through a [Twitter
account](https://twitter.com/AutoNetflix) that derives content from an
automated generator (one created by Madrigal and Ian Bogost, a Professor
of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech).

![](https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-3-300x193.png){.alignnone
.wp-image-3702 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="351" height="226"
srcset="https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-3-300x193.png.webp 300w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-3-450x290.png.webp 450w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-3-140x90.png.webp 140w, https://cstonline.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Figure-3.png 620w"
sizes="(max-width: 351px) 100vw, 351px"}

From the perspective of teaching, these highly specific
micro-genres---such as 'Post-Apocalyptic Workplace Westerns' or
'Imaginative Vampire Action Movies Set in Prehistoric Times From the
1970s'---provide a humorous endpoint from which to think about the
value/futility of genre classifications, and the degree to which genres
rely on small variations from a tried and tested formula. While the
micro-genres generated by the bot are defined from Netflix's data, the
labels can include a longer list of descriptors than the site generally
makes visible. The [wonderfully
evocative](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/45028) ['Deep Sea
Horror'](https://www.netflix.com/browse/genre/45028) *is* an accessible
option. But, given that four of the seven current listings are dedicated
to the *Sharknado* franchise, does it really warrant its own category?
Let the students decide...

[**Jennifer O'Meara**](http://jennifer-omeara.com/) is a Teaching Fellow
in Film Studies at the University of St Andrews.

**Works cited:**

Richard Maltby, *Hollywood Cinema: an introduction,* Oxford; Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell, 1995.


Although Netflix’s approach to genre is different to those predominant in screen studies, the streaming site provides useful contextual materials for teaching on the subject. At several points last semester Netflix proved relevant to discussions of genre as part of an introductory Film Studies module, as well as an Honours ‘Film Genres’ module.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

CFP: InMedia, the French Journal of Media studies – DOCUMENTARY AND ENTERTAINMENT

TEACHING GENRE USING NETFLIX